I Tried Neovim Again...

December 4, 2025

This is the third or fourth time I've tried Neovim and each time I just still can't get it to stick. I wan't to like it and I wan't to be proficient with it, but it just doesn't seem to work for me. Each time I have tried, I am able to use it a bit longer. First time I probably lasted one day, second time and third time maybe two days, and lastly this time I've been able to use it for at least a week. But I still just can't get it to stick. I find my way back to VSCode because I feel much faster there.

The appeal of Neovim is that I can configure everything and do so easily. I like to think that if just maybe I forced myself into it, I would become even faster at programming. I like that I could take my single init.lua file and use it across machines and terminals. I like the core concept of it all and I love developer tools as a whole, so you think it'd be a great fit.

There isn't necessarily a problem with Neovim or something about VSCode that is far superior at, I think it is simply that I have "sharpened my axe" with VSCode and it works well for me. I have 40+ custom keybindings, a minimal set of plugins, and a minimal UI to go with it. It's not that I am opposed to configuration, I've just gotten really good with VSCode and the way I have configured it, it's hard to give up.

Vim motions seems to be the biggest hurdle for me. I have a hard time getting used to them, I suspect that would just take more time. But what about when I am outside of my editor? What if I am writing in Slack, Google Doc, or anything else in the browser? I can't use Vim motions there unless I install more plugins in these other apps. I have found that by using most of the native keyboard shortcuts(Mod keys + arrows), I can easily move across apps and have the same experience. Maybe that is just an excuse, and maybe I need to adjust my mindset that Vim motions and "true text editing" is an exclusive thing to my editor.

Anyways, let's see where I'm at with this again in a year. I'm sure I'll try it again.